Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi in a conversation over at Artsy:
Long before he was curator of African art at Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum, Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, better known as “Smooth,” was traveling the world as a nomadic artist and curator. And before that, he was studying sculpture under El Anatsui in his native Nigeria. Today, on the heels of co-curating the prestigious Dak’Art, the biennial of contemporary African art, we spoke with Nzewi about his thoughts on curating, the growing interest in contemporary art produced by artists of African background, and the 10 artists he’s most looking forward to seeing at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair.More here
image via World Biennial Forum
Artsy: What is your mission as a curator?
USN: I think that a grounding in art history is very key to curating. As an artist myself, I am interested in the creative process; how the artist arrives at certain choices leading to the making of the work, and the internal dilemma and intellectual agonies faced by the artist as he or she considers the reception of the work and market pressures. More often than not these issues are masked in the completed work, but are also what gives the work its soul. I am deeply interested in the space from which the art is produced or the artist produces—which could be personal, creative, sociological, intellectual, or biographical—and what one can learn from that space.
I seek the artist’s creative argument and what the artwork can reveal about the collective social imagination...I am interested in the ways in which we can understand our humanity through creative expressions. I see my role as that of a mediator of aesthetic and cultural experiences that are very much invested in the artwork. I pay particular attention to nuances that attend the complex ways in which people in general process their realities and experiences.
